In vitro culture of Taxus sp.: strategies to increase cell growth and taxoid production

Abstract

Interest in Taxus species has increased since paclitaxel, an anticancer drug, was isolated from the bark of Taxus brevifolia (Pacific yew) in the 1960's. Great effort has been carried out to establish an efficient callus cultures of Taxus species. Culture media must be optimized for each Taxus species, and in general, there is no one method that guarantees success for Taxus cultures. The source of explant, culture medium composition and the growth regulators used appear to affect callus initiation and maintenance. Research effort has focused on obtaining a cell culture that exhibits good growth and a high rate of taxoid accumulation. In this sense, many strategies have been employed to stimulate taxoid production without affecting cell growth. In an attempt to scale-up cell culture, problems such us shear stress, oxygen supply and gas composition have been studied. A more detailed knowledge of the pathway and the fluxes of intermediates towards taxane accumulation will be key factors to obtain cell lines with increased taxane accumulation through metabolic engineering.

Lignan accumulation in two-phase cultures of Taxus x media hairy roots

“…The pinoresinol and matairesinol content increase after 100 µM MeJa or 3 mM CA treatment was described by Schmitt and Petersen (2002) in Forsythia x intermedia suspension cultures. Lignan yield was enhanced 3-and sevenfold, respectively by MeJa while CA enhanced only the pinoresinol content by over ninefold.…”

“…For the extraction of lignans from hairy roots a modified method of Wichers et al (1990) after Schmitt and Petersen (2002) was applied. 0.09 g DW ± 0.024 of lyophilized powdered tissue of roots was suspended in 2 ml of methanol (MeOH, Avantor Performance Materials Poland S.A., Poland) and extracted twice in an ultrasonic bath on ice for 15 min.…”

“…cell, tissue and organ culture systems have been developed for the production of paclitaxel and other taxanes, an important class of anticancer agents (Yared and Tkaczuk 2012), which was reviewed in detail by Zhong (2002), Tabata (2004Tabata ( , 2006, Maheshwari et al (2008), Expósito et al (2009), Sabater-Jara et al (2010, Malik et al (2011), Onrubia et al (2013). Using various biotechnological methods to enhance paclitaxel production the exceptional progress has been made and finally the process was commercialized (Frense 2007;Expósito et al 2009).…”

Production of valuable compounds by molds and yeasts

“…was reported to be at 67 mg l − 1 . 56 However, addition of methyl jasmonate, a plant signal transducer, increased production to 110 mg l − 1 .…”

Effect of plant growth regulators on the accumulation of indolizidine alkaloids in Securinega suffruticosa callus cultures

“…Given that the biosynthesis of alkaloids in plant cell cultures is strongly affected by both the type and concentration of PGRs used (Verpoorte et al 1991), modifications of phytohormone composition can be considered a simple, yet effective tool for improving the productivity of an in vitro system. However, contrary to other alkaloid groups such as indole (Verpoorte et al 1991;van der Heijden et al 2004;Pietrosiuk et al 2007) and diterpene derivatives (Sabater-Jara et al 2010;Malik et al 2011), reports concerning the influence of exogenous PGRs on indolizidine alkaloid accumulation are rather scarce and limited to the most commonly used phytohormones like 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D), 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), and kinetin (KIN) (Wysokińska 1979;Ide 1991;Yuan et al 2007).…”